


Ricochet

by Edhla



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2019-10-29 08:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17804723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edhla/pseuds/Edhla
Summary: A season One/Two AU: Moriarty's bomb does go off at the pool, and Sherlock and John wake up to find themselves in 1983, where a nineteen-year-old junior police officer named Greg Lestrade needs a bit of help with a murder case.





	1. Chapter 1

Sherlock might have expected the blast to be sound and fury, but John knew better. He knew that an explosion always sounded like silence; that it always looked like darkness. There was silence,

there was darkness,

and then there was nothing.

Nothing but an overcast sky.

Then came the itch of grass on his ears, the bitter smell of weeds and something jutting into his shoulder blades. Unsteadily, John sat up, looking around. He was in a child's playground: a forlorn little set of swings, not three metres away from a pile of industrial waste and a red brick wall separating it from a run of semis on that side of the street. In the other direction, the street ended in a cobblestoned cul-de-sac. On the opposite side of the street was another row of semis, broken here and there by gaps where a house had been demolished. He had no idea where he was, except for an uncomfortable feeling that he was no longer in London. A few feet away, Sherlock was also in the act of sitting up, one hand to his head.

For a long time—perhaps five minutes—the only sounds around them were ordinary suburban ones. Distant traffic. A motorbike being revved out the front of some hidden house around the corner. The subtleties of birdsong. Sherlock rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, taking a deep breath.

"What the hell just happened?" John finally said. "… And why do you look like that…?"

Sherlock stared at him, confused. "Why," he said, "how do I look?"

"… Different." But John could not explain why. Then it hit him: Sherlock's suit was cut differently, the lapels wider, and he was wearing a wide-set blue tie. His hair, too, might have been different, shorter over his ears, but he was in such a state of disarray that it was hard to tell. What he _didn_ ' _t_ seem to be was injured. How could they have been in a bomb blast at an indoor swimming pool, at midnight, just seconds ago? The memory of the standoff with Moriarty was so vivid John could almost still smell the chlorine. "Sherlock, did we just die?"

"You seem alive enough," Sherlock said, getting up and reaching out to yank John to his feet, "and I refuse to believe that hell is in Bristol."

"Bristol?"

"Yes, Bristol. Don't you recognise the spire of St. Mary Redcliffe?" He pointed to the east, over the roofs of a line of houses, and John saw a gothic church, needle-sharp, outlined against the sky.

"No," he muttered. "I don't recognise the spire of St. Mary Redcliffe." He reached out to wipe sweat off his forehead, and a flash of unfamiliar colour on his sleeve caught his attention. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was wearing a pale grey suit and a wide tie of purple and blue diamonds. He yanked at it and made a helpless little whine of confusion. "Sherlock, five minutes ago we were at a sports centre in Whitechapel with a homicidal maniac threatening us with a sniper and a bomb. Tell me what—"

"Dr. Watson!"

John turned toward the sound, coming from one of the vacant lots on the other side of the street. At the far end of it, bordering more houses, was a rotting board fence with half the panels missing and another pile of household rubbish, interspersed here and there with chickweed and tall grass. Beside it, three police officers in uniform were standing around something, and one was gesturing over his shoulder to him.

"I need to find out what's going on," Sherlock said, beginning to back away. "I'll find you later."

"Wait, what—"

"I'll find you."

"Sherlock, don't—"

The policeman across the street called John again, just as Sherlock darted off in the direction of the corner.

 _"Sherlock!_ " John called again. But after taking a step, the ground rushed up to meet him and he wobbled, holding out one hand to balance himself. He'd hit his head, or been given some sort of hallucinatory drug, or _something_ ; he couldn't chase after Sherlock in this state. Before he could pull himself together enough to call again, Sherlock had legged it over a low brick wall at the end of the cul-de-sac and disappeared into what might have been a park beyond.

Typical.

From across the street, a bellow: "Dr. Watson, are you coming or _what?"_

Well, _was_ he coming or what? Sherlock was gone, and he couldn't stand in the middle of a child's playground in God-knew-where all day waiting for him to come back. Taking the plunge, John crossed the street toward the little group of officers, one palm to his aching neck.

He didn't know how to tell a policeman's rank by his uniform, but it was obvious that the man who had hailed him was in charge and meant business. He was middle-aged, fifty or so: a typical plodder, with great slabs of forearms and a moustache that could only be described as 'truculent'. As he turned to him, John could just make out a shiny badge on his coat and the name _Brian._ Half-glimpsed, his surname could be _Stem_ or _Stern_. The other two officers were younger, perhaps in their late thirties or early forties: one was holding his helmet under his arm and the breeze was whipping at his sandy-coloured hair; a pleasant-looking sort of person, dough-faced and mild-eyed. The other was a chinless scarecrow of a man with something about him that John was instinctively wary of. Sharp-eyed, like a reptile.

"Sorry." John glanced back across the street, still bewildered. "Where am I…?"

"Nice of you to join us," Stern—definitely _Stern_ , and an Inspector, going by that badge—said, as if he hadn't heard him. He pulled a cigarette out of his coat pocket and, to John's astonishment, put it in his mouth and lit it. "We could've solved ten cases while you were pissing about. Any more from you and you'll be back in bloody Southend handing out little blue pills to clean up the clap, get that?" He pointed to the grass with his cigarette. "Couple of kids found this one an hour ago. Give us your thoughts on it, then."

It had been part of John's training in Afghanistan that soldiers who hesitated were soldiers who died. _Keep moving. Keep talking. Do something. Anything. Think about this later._

This was something he knew about. It was something he could handle, as far as handling things went. It was a crime scene, and the stinking mass Stern had just pointed to was a corpse. Or part of a corpse, anyhow. John could see pieces of a tattered, bloodstained t-shirt and a white expanse of what was probably the victim's back, framed by chickweed and brambles. There was no sign of any head, arms, or legs. By the horrific smell, emanating from the torso in waves, it had been there for a long time. Perhaps a couple of weeks.

He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket—not the one he'd had in his pocket when he'd stormed out of Baker Street about a million years ago, but a tartan one which was both vaguely familiar and one he'd never seen before—and covered his nose and mouth, then stepped forward and crouched down beside the body to have a look at what they were dealing with. It was, to put it lightly, not pretty.

"Young boy," he finally said through the handkerchief, "aged between, say, fourteen and sixteen? Eighteen, at a stretch. Caucasian. Well nourished. Seems to have been in good health, but it's hard to tell when—"

"Good health? He's bloody dead," Brian said, which got a snigger out of the others. "So I'm assuming it's another victim of this weirdo we've got on the loose?"

John paused, but only for a second. "Sure," he said. "I mean… uh, the uh, the body's obviously been dumped. But I really can't tell you much more, you're going to have to wait until the SOCOs and forensic crew…" The ground beneath him seemed to heave, and the world spinning off its axis. A sudden wave of nausea yanked at John, and he put one wrist against his mouth and cleared his throat.

_What the hell? I'm a bloody doctor, I've never thrown up at a crime scene!_

"Sorry," he said when he was finally able. "I feel sort of..."

He heard another snigger from the sharp-faced officer at his left shoulder and decided to ignore it.

There was something amused and triumphant in Stern's expression, too, as if a low opinion of John had just been confirmed. Not quite a smirk, but definitely on its way there. "You gonna make it through this?"

"Probably not, no," John said, seizing the possibility of being able to leave. He needed to be somewhere, _anywhere_ , that wasn't here. He needed to find Sherlock. "Sorry, I just—"

"Oi," Stern said, giving a sharp whistle to someone over John's shoulder. "Pretty Boy, will you take Dr. Watson home?"

 _Good,_ John thought, turning around to see who it was. _Because I have no idea where 'home' even is—_

Another PC in uniform had just stepped out of a green two-door Capri parked on the kerb and was making his way over. He was very young, perhaps still in his teens. Thinner, more tanned, dark-haired, and with a certain meekness in his posture that John had never seen in him before, but there was no doubt as to who on the force they were calling 'Pretty Boy.' He stopped dead at the unexpected command, looking a little affronted. "But I just got here," he protested.

"Yes, and now you're just going. Don't blame me, blame the poor little dear who's got the vapours over here." Brian gave them both a curt wave that was two degrees away from a shove. "Off you go. I'll see you down at Central in an hour, Lestrade. Dr. Watson, I'll be dealing with you tomorrow. Looking forward to it."

 _Keep moving. Do something. Do anything._ John blundered toward the Capri, waiting at the passenger-side door while Lestrade unlocked his own door, got in and leaned across the gearstick to unlock the passenger door. He got in, digging his fingertips into his eyes and taking a deep breath. _This is not happening. This is insane. I've died and I've gone to hell and hell is in Bristol, for some reason._

The car around him smelled like cheap vinyl, aftershave and cigarette smoke. The source of this last one was an overflowing ashtray just below the tape deck.

"Sorry," Lestrade said, seeing his disgusted expression and guessing what it meant. "I don't usually have workmates in my car…"

"It's fine, you don't have to—"

But it was too late. Lestrade pulled the ashtray out, opened his door again, and dumped the contents out onto the road, then slotted it back in its place and gave the car door a cheerful slam.

 _Stern called him by name; and anyway, there's no way that's anyone else,_ John thought, watching him as he took his helmet off, threw it into the console between them, and dragged his hand through his hair.

Stern's sarcastic nickname mightn't have been kind, but it was apt. The silver hair and slightly haggard, harassed look of his middle age had masculinised Greg Lestrade; without them he was almost girlish, with an oval face and long eyelashes. There was something about him that wasn't so pretty, though—John, ever a doctor, could see that below his left cheekbone was the shadow of a black eye. His left hand, resting on the gearstick, was tattered and callused, as if he worked in manual labour. He drove in silence, until John, desperately trying to think of something to say that wouldn't sound deranged, said, "Does he always talk to people like that?"

"Who?" Lestrade reached out to slap at the tape deck, which was playing something John recognised vaguely from his childhood, but didn't have the energy to try to identify. A David Bowie song… he'd bought a cassette with his pocket money when he was twelve…

"Stern," he said, taking a guess that neither he nor Lestrade would be on a first-name basis with the guy.

At this, Lestrade glanced at him. "You've been the FME on this case for, what, nearly two months, Dr. Watson," he said. "I thought you'd know what he's like by now."

 _FME: Force Medical Examiner. Ongoing murder case. Right, now we're getting somewhere. Thank Christ I'm not a pathologist._ "I meant," he said, "was he like that before I got here, or is it just something he's put on specially for me?"

Lestrade shrugged as he changed lanes. Out the window, the view had become increasingly unsettling. A seemingly ordinary afternoon on the high street, with bag-laden shoppers hurrying up to parked cars and teenagers congregated on the low stone wall of a nineteenth-century church, clutching cigarettes and cans. There was something wrong with how they were dressed, with their hair—John was still too befuddled to work out what. It was only once they'd turned the corner and were back in another tree-lined suburban street that he realised something else: all those people, and he had not seen one of them with a mobile phone.

His own mobile had been confiscated, or possibly destroyed, by Moriarty earlier in the night. Only it was no longer night. It was, by the looks of things, mid-afternoon. On top of everything else, the universe had apparently decided to give him a huge dose of jetlag.

* * *

"You sure you're okay, Dr. Watson? You look like you don't even know where you are."

John took a deep breath, looking up at the Victorian semi Lestrade had just stopped in front of. He apparently lived here, in Dalrymple Street, according to the sign three houses down. The house was a deep teal colour, the street door reached by a narrow set of concrete steps.

"Dr. Watson?"

 _Why's he keep calling me that?_ John thought, irritated. Hardly anyone called him _Dr. Watson._ He'd even had _patients_ call him by his first name, and he'd never corrected them. "Yeah," he made himself say, doing his best to sound upbeat. "I'm fine."

"You don't want me to come in with you?"

John did, but he shook his head. The last thing he needed was for Lestrade to realise he didn't even know his own house. "It's fine," he said. "See you tomorrow?"

It was a guess at his work schedule which failed. "Someone'll call and let you know," Lestrade said. "I'm rostered off tomorrow." He did not seem pleased about it.

"Oh." John had the impression if he said any more, he'd get himself into trouble. "Fine. Okay. Well, I'll see you at some point…"

With this he climbed out of the car, shutting the door and turning so that Lestrade couldn't see the look on his face. Only when the Capri had taken off and turned the corner into the next street did he start climbing those concrete steps, pulling an unfamiliar set of keys out of his pocket, hoping he'd followed Lestrade's line of sight correctly and this was the house he'd taken him to, not the one next door.

There was a line of doorbells on the right of the doorway, which was both a blessing and a disappointment—he'd been taken to a flat, not a house, but at least the one he lived in was labelled for him. The hall just inside the street door was dark and cool, smelling of floor polish. He trudged up a narrow flight of steps to the second landing, finding the door of flat D and trying each key in turn until one fitted the lock.

He expected the door to stick—this was not his house, so none of these could be the right key. Instead, the lock flicked over easily, and the door opened with barely a creak, as though it was in constant use. It opened onto a dark, low-eaved sitting room, which reeked of cigarette smoke. Against the far wall was a blockish, beige-coloured sofa, and Sherlock Holmes was sitting on it, a lit cigarette in his mouth.

"Jesus!" John almost slammed the door after himself, then drew a deep breath. "You scared the hell out of me. What—"

"Oh, _I've_ scared the hell out of you? This." Sherlock stood up, picking up a newspaper from the coffee table in front of him and handing it across. "Yesterday's evening paper." He flopped down on the sofa again, as though exhausted with the effort.

John took it, staring blankly at the headline: _Thatcher Hints at General Election_. A thin panel on the left of the front page included a colour photograph of Prince Charles, with a full head of dark hair and wearing a baby-blue polo jumper, one arm around a flop-haired, smiling Princess Diana. She held a bald, woeful-looking baby on her lap, and the headline proclaimed he was: _Our Sweet William!_ John's gaze shot up to the date just above the by-line: Thursday, March 24, 1983.

"I don't know what you're playing at," he said, trying to stop the tremor in his voice, "but this isn't funny and it's got to stop."

"I'm not playing at anything," Sherlock said grimly, taking another drag of his cigarette. "And if I could stop it, I would."

"You're not seriously suggesting we've gone back in time. If this is 1983, Sherlock, I should be able to go out to Portsmouth right now and find _me_ , sitting the eleven-plus at St John's and wondering whether my dad was going to kill me if I failed. But apparently I'm going to pass, or did pass, or _something_ , because I'm still a doctor."

"Yes, I know," Sherlock said.

John rolled his eyes. "Of course. You know everything. _How_ did you know?"

"I found your address by looking you up in the white pages. You're listed as Dr. J.H. Watson."

"I don't even know what station I'm supposed to be working out of. Apparently, I'm the FME for… whichever station those officers who were across the street from where we… were… work out of..." Aware that he was almost gibbering now, he took a deep breath and went to the window. The room was cold, but he pushed up the sash, letting a flood of fresh air into the room. "They all seemed to know me, but I've never seen any of them before. Except one. Greg Lestrade just drove me home."

Sherlock got out of his seat. "Sorry, what?"

"Lestrade."

"Yes, I know who he _is,"_ Sherlock said acidly. "I was commenting on what he's doing here with us."

"Yeah, that's the thing, I don't think he's here _with us_. He looks like he's not even old enough to shave yet, and he's acting like it's 1983 and nothing weird's just happened."

"Did he recognise you?"

"From the future? Of course he didn't. But he seems to think we've been working together for months, and he keeps calling me 'Dr. Watson'."

Sherlock shook his head. "It explains why we're in Bristol," he said. "Lestrade's first post was there. Here."

"So you're saying we _are_ in—"

"We're _not_ in the past, John; it's impossible. If time was linear and we were in the past, Lestrade would also have recognised you in the future. And as you so correctly pointed out, if we were really in 1983, we'd both currently exist in two places at once. I'd be six years old and at school in Hertford."

"So you're going along with time travel being real, but it's multiple dimensions that's tripped you up?"

"The opposite." Sherlock reached out to stub his cigarette out in the ashtray that sat on the coffee table, his hands shaking so badly that he could hardly make them accomplish the task. Then he picked up a packet of cigarettes that sat beside the ashtray, gesturing with them. "By the way, you'll be interested to know that these were sitting on the coffee table. You smoke."

"I do _not_ smoke," John protested. "I've never smoked."

"Precisely. So this must be a parallel reality in which you do."

"Jesus, my head hurts." John buried his face in his hands, thinking this through. "If, Sherlock," he said through his fingers, _"if_ it was 1983, or some sort of... I dunno... parallel reality... and I was picking a place to live, it wouldn't be here. Why _here?"_ He dropped his hands to his sides and looked around. The place was not a far cry from 221B Baker Street, in terms of its age, interior decoration and overall feel. Beiges, browns and oranges, with cream accents. A dingy little one-bedroom flat, occupying only part of the top floor of the building: in the far corner, the roof sloped almost down to the floor. There was a kitchenette at one end of the room, barely big enough for a stove and refrigerator, and beyond it, a half-open door that led to a green-tiled bathroom. Another door, between the sofa and the window, was closed; apparently it led to a bedroom. There was a red-shaded lamp on a stand to one side of the armchair, a record player under the window, and a tiny, curve-screened television on a wooden stand in the opposite corner. Other than this, there seemed to be very little in the room—not even a book case. Not _too_ much like Baker Street, then, with its piles of stuff strewn everywhere. Sherlock's stuff. If he lived here, John thought, where did _Sherlock_ live?

"I think," Sherlock said, "you live in a place like this because you're a doctor who's just returned injured from a war." He threw a small shining object to him, and John automatically caught it. "This was on the coffee table when I came in, only a few minutes before you did. We need to search the flat."

John looked down. In his hand was a glinting service medal, sea-green stripes between two white and then two blue stripes. He felt himself drop, rather than sit, on the sofa; then he turned the medal on its side to read the initials and rank transcribed on it. "Sherlock," he said, "this is the South Atlantic Medal. It was given to British personnel who served in the Falklands."

"And it's inscribed with your initials."

"They're not my initials. I've seen this before, but it's not mine. It's my dad's."


	2. Chapter 2

There was not much of the flat to search, as it happened. Whether he was his own father, his present self, his past self or some parallel version of himself, John Watson was still neat and tidy. Under the coffee table, hidden by a tablecloth that both of them had recognised as too out of character to be meant as a decoration, was a cardboard box full of various items: The Browning, a leather-bound Bible, and discharge papers from the Royal Navy. John had been invalided out on October 13, 1982.

"Standard discharge papers," John reported, looking them over. "Apart from the dates, they haven't changed very much in a few decades." But he still sounded troubled. "And they're in my name. Dad's middle name was—is—James."

"I know."

"Will you stop doing that?"

Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, then decided to shut it again.

"Anyway, his rank was Lieutenant Commander, and he didn't have any medical training," John went on, sounding matter-of-fact. "According to this, _mine's_ Surgeon Lieutenant, and I was an MO on the HMS _Ardent_."

"What happened to you?"

"Doesn't say. I doubt anything good, because the _Ardent_ was sunk after being bombed by Argentine aircraft. I can't remember exactly when, but I'm pretty sure it went down early in the conflict. There would have been, say, at least three or four months between the sinking and when I was formally served papers." His hand crept under the collar of his shirt, fingers moving toward his left shoulder.

"Scar?"

"Still there."

"Shame."

John glanced up. For once, he wasn't sure if Sherlock was being sarcastic or not. After a long and puzzled pause, he said, "Look, if we just went out to where my family were living in 1983 and checked—"

"—We would break the time and space continuum. So don't even think about it."

"I'm pretty sure it's broken already, Sherlock. Or at least, there's a good-sized dent in it."

But Sherlock did not respond to this. He was pacing around the room, restless, looking out the window at nothing, checking the skirting boards for nothing, covering his nose and mouth with his hands every now and again, tugging at his hair, giving the wall between the living area and the bedroom a frustrated slap that was two degrees away from a punch. After a few minutes of this, John checked his watch.

"One hour, fourteen minutes," he announced.

"Hmm?"

"You're missing your phone, aren't you? That's how long it took you to start going crazy without it. An hour and fourteen minutes."

"Oh, shut up," Sherlock snapped. "What do you think I want it for, to play FreeCell? I _need_ it. It's _important_."

"It's useless to you anyway," John said. "Mobile towers don't exist, and neither does the internet." He got up. "Come on, we haven't finished looking."

"Oh, you seem to have gotten over yourself!"

John, to his own surprise, had. The conflicting data around him was too interesting for him to sit and worry about breaking the time and space continuum. He went into the bedroom and Sherlock, in high dudgeon, followed.

The bedroom was bigger than his at Baker Street, and better kitted out: a double bed in the centre of the room with a sturdy headboard of dark wood and a nondescript blue-grey duvet that, he thought, was more like something he'd have actually chosen to put on his bed than anything he'd seen in the flat so far. Other than this, there was a set of bedside tables that didn't match the bed, being in a lighter walnut-coloured wood, and surmounted by a pair of flimsy lamps with cheap blue shades. The one on the far side of the room was obviously rarely used, judging from the coating of dust on it. The other was obviously on his preferred side of the bed; along with it was a clunky grey phone. In the corner between them sat an old-fashioned Teledex. John sat down on the bed and picked it up with a familiar, comforting flash of recognition. He hadn't seen one of these in years. Sherlock, meanwhile, had gone to the wardrobe on the opposite wall and half-disappeared inside it, apparently pulling things out at random.

John ignored him. He opened the Teledex, starting at A, and worked his way through his (apparent) contacts. Almost all were Bristol numbers, and none struck him as familiar. There was one number listed under _Surgery_ and, tucked in next to it, a piece of scrap paper listing five ten-hour timeslots, one each day of the week, except for Monday and Friday.

"What day is it again?" he asked vaguely, reading them through.

"Friday."

"Looks like I've got work tomorrow. I knew I couldn't be a full-time FME—they're normally on a roster, one or two days a fortnight, or else they're on call for a particular case." John got up and crouched down beside the bed to look under it, finding what he expected: a thick phone book. He yanked it out and sat down again, flicking through it to find the address of the surgery he apparently worked at.

"You look at that, then." Sherlock dumped something on the floor of the wardrobe with a heavy _thunk_ and stood up, reaching for the door handle. "I'll make coffee."

John might have normally expressed more surprise at this declaration, but it had been a strange day already; and anyhow, he was busy looking through the listings for medical practices in the area. His only reply was a vague murmur.

* * *

By the time Sherlock had brought coffee in for both of them, John was writing an address down on a notepad he'd found next to the phone. "Pembroke Road," he said, reaching out for the cup Sherlock handed to him. "Wherever that is. I suppose I can just give a cab driver the address. Oh—yeah, Lestrade's info's in here, too. He's got a flat in Broad Street, apparently."

Sherlock took the Teledex, figuring out how to work it and going through the listings again. There weren't many, but one was _very_ interesting. Eventually, he said, "So. 'Donna.' _"_

John looked irritated. "You know I don't know who that is."

"No," Sherlock agreed, upbeat. "But all of these entries are in your handwriting, and I note you've listed no surname or address for this woman."

"So?"

"So you know her _very_ well, and there's every likelihood that she lives in this building."

"Oh, God, that's the last thing I need," John said, but his interest had been piqued, and clearly, he wasn't thinking too carefully about one Sarah Sawyer. He reached out for his coffee and sipped it again, lost in thought.

"There's one thing you haven't mentioned," Sherlock said, "if you even realised it, which is doubtful."

"What?"

"Nothing in this flat indicates you know me at all. You don't even have my phone number or address near the phone."

"Maybe I know it by heart."

 _"Do_ you know it by heart?"

"No," John had to confess. "But be fair. I don't know Harry's or Mike's or Greg's off by heart either. So what's all that mean?"

"I'm here," Sherlock said, "so I clearly _exist._ But why is there no _evidence_ of my existence? The police officers at the scene yesterday called to you by name. They gave no indication at all they'd even seen I was there. I am not easy to overlook."

"I believe you." John took another sip of his coffee. "Jesus," he muttered. "I didn't realise how terrible instant coffee was in 1983."

"For God's sake, I've already told you—"

"Sherlock, I understand the idea of time travel better than I understand the idea of parallel dimensions, so do you think you could just let me imagine it's really, truly 1983?"

Sherlock exhaled. "All right," he said. "And that's another thing. I need your help."

"Really? Could I get that in writing?"

_"John."_

"All right, fine, you need my help. About what, exactly?"

"Let's…" Sherlock took another breath, as if he were about to say something that pained him. "Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that we are in a standard time-travel dimension. This is a common scenario found in science fiction films and literature, yes?"

"Yeah."

"What happens?"

It was a moment before John understood what he was being asked. Sherlock was, as they'd established only days before, spectacularly ignorant about some things, and that included most novels, films, plays and television shows. John racked his brain for all the information on pop culture time travel available to him. Back to the Future… Doctor Who… Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure…

"To… right a wrong, usually," he finally said. "You know, or make sure something important happens, because if it doesn't, the future can't happen. But then that leads to the Grandfather Paradox."

"Hmm?"

"Well, say you're sent back in time to kill your own grandfather when he was a baby. You can't. Because if you did, you wouldn't exist…" John set down the coffee cup on the bedside table, judging the distance badly and nearly missing it altogether. Then his hand went to his temple. "Sorry," he said, a little thickly. "I don't know what…"

"I do," Sherlock said, unconcerned. He gave John's shoulder a light shove and he collapsed sprawling onto the mattress, slack limbed. "Pleasant dreams." He yanked the duvet out from the mattress and threw it over him. Whatever John's skills as a doctor, he hadn't recognised the taste of Valium in his coffee.

Sherlock moved quietly around the room for a minute or two, putting various items back in the wardrobe and in a very private denial that he was monitoring John's breathing. Once he was sure he was properly under but not likely to vomit or choke, he pocketed a dozen Valium pills and put John's medical case back from where he'd pulled it, the top shelf of the wardrobe. John hadn't seen it yet, and had no idea the amount of restricted drugs casually sitting inside it. 1983 was, it seemed, a very medically irresponsible year, but that suited Sherlock's purposes just fine.

* * *

Sherlock had no car, no money and no familiarity with the local transport system, but he did have a basic understanding of the geography of Bristol, so he made his way to Broad Street on foot. It was now early evening, and as he made his way through the smoke-scented streets, the street lamps came on and various businesses were pulling down their shutters and locking up for the day. He found a newspaper stand on the high street that was still open and saw, on the front page, a school portrait of a gap-toothed, red-haired boy of about fourteen and the headline _Where is Derek?_ But he had no money to buy a copy, and standing there reading an unbought newspaper was going to draw attention to himself. Fishing around in his pocket, he found and lit a cigarette—he'd taken it from John's packet, being confident John wouldn't mind if he even noticed—and walked on, thinking hard.

That he and John were somehow in the same place with Lestrade—Lestrade, only thirty years younger, according to John—could not possibly be a coincidence.

The flat listed as Lestrade's was above a little shop that sold cameras and developed film, and was reached by a back entrance that had no security door and was not, it seemed, even locked after dark. The stairwell was lit with a greenish fluorescent tinge. Sherlock climbed the stairs to the third floor almost soundlessly, thought stealth was not needed: he could hear loud music even from the ground floor, a fast-paced bass beat overlaid with jangly rhythm guitars and a strangled male vocal. When he reached the landing, he found a reinforced security door with a pale yellow light shining out from underneath it and music pulsing from behind it. He knocked and waited for the sudden dip in volume and the expected, characteristic "Hang on!". Then there was a beleaguered sigh and a series of shuffles until Lestrade slid the bolt across and opened the door, peering out as his eyes adjusted to the shifting light.

Sherlock had seen, as had most of Scotland Yard, what Lestrade had looked like at eighteen: there was a framed photo on his desk of him posing between a middle-aged couple, his parents, on the day he'd first put on a uniform. But he'd been dressed up and on his best behaviour that day. Now he was wearing a grubby white t-shirt, a pair of stonewash jeans, no shoes, and had a spliff in his mouth.

"Who the hell are you?" was his easygoing greeting. He pulled the spliff from his lip and turned his head to avoid blowing smoke in his visitor's face.

 _Why don't you know me?_ Sherlock wanted to shout at him. _You know John!_ He'd have admitted outright to how petulant and jealous this sounded if it would only net him an honest answer.

"Sherlock Holmes," was all he said, holding his hand out to shake.

Lestrade, embarrassed but polite, moved the spliff from his right hand to his left and obliged. "Okay," he said, as if agreeing that if nothing else, _this_ was the truth; nobody would be likely to make up a name like _Sherlock Holmes_. "I'm none the wiser, though."

"And you never will be," Sherlock said, in a low enough tone that Lestrade did not react. "I'm… working for the police," he finally said in a louder voice. "I'm a friend of John Watson." The word _friend_ sounded strange in his mouth, and he almost repeated it to see how he liked a second taste of it.

"Oh." Lestrade scratched the back of his head. "Is he OK? He looked like sixteen shades of shit this afternoon."

"He'll recover," Sherlock said, deciding not to comment on this colourful turn of phrase. "I'm not here about John. I'm here about your latest case."

"Sorry?"

"The police found a body this afternoon. It's missed the evening papers, but it will be front-page news in the morning ones. Which means we don't have much of a head start—"

"No, seriously, who _are_ you?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. Dense as ever. He could, of course, pull out a series of deductions that were mainly deductions and some actual memories of Lestrade's background, his family, his personality, his interests. On the other hand, he could just… "I'm a consulting detective for the Metropolitan Police," he said witheringly. "And I'm currently being assaulted with the smoke from what is clearly not a cigarette. Hardly honourable behaviour for a sworn officer, now, is it?"

At this, Lestrade gave in and let Sherlock into the flat. If anything, it was smaller and even dingier than John's; a bedsit, with a single bed at one end of the room and the world's smallest kitchenette at the other. Like John's flat, it smelled strongly of damp carpet and cigarettes; unlike John's, it was chaotic, with various objects strewn all over the sofa and the floor: takeout containers, dishes, cassette tapes, ashtrays, records, and clothes. There was a pair of y-fronts slung over the foot of the bed, which Sherlock instantly decided not to notice. On the back of the bathroom door hung Lestrade's police uniform, immaculately cleaned and pressed, with not a stray speck of lint on it. His helmet sat, pride of place, on a book shelf near the TV that seemed to hold mostly cassette tapes and blue-covered police training manuals. Of particular interest was the far wall between the bed and what was obviously a bathroom door: on it was a large corkboard, covered with dozens of pinned photographs, letters and press cuttings.

"I'm not high or anything," Lestrade said, glancing toward the door a little nervously, as if contemplating making a break for it. "Just had a rough day, that's all…"

"I don't work for the drugs squad." Sherlock held his hand out for the spliff, took a puff and handed it back.

"Look, I don't know how you found me, but if you're on the murder squad at Scotland Yard and someone's told you this is my case, or even that I'm _on_ the case, you've got it wrong. I'm just a bobby. I'm still on _probation."_

Sherlock pointed to the corkboard on the wall.

Lestrade followed Sherlock's gesture, scratching the back of his head again; a meek, deferential gesture that proclaimed _Oh, shucks, I'm just a nobody from Kewstoke_. His accent, too, was a lot broader than the one he would end up using as a Detective Inspector for the Metropolitan Police, vowels curling toward r's in a way they wouldn't after five years in London. "Well… doesn't hurt to have my own opinions," he mumbled, embarrassed. "I'm hoping to make detective and work for the CID one day. Maybe even Scotland Yard, if I can get there."

But Sherlock was not listening to Lestrade's career ambitions. He'd gone to the corkboard and was taking in its contents. On the lower left, Lestrade had pinned a copy of the same school portrait Sherlock had seen on the front page of the evening newspaper. Red hair, gappy teeth. The boy's eyes were white-lashed, and, though it was hard to tell from the photograph, probably a greyish green. Under the photo, was a piece of paper where Lestrade had written in sharpie: _Derek Metcalfe 08/04/1968 19/10/1982 (3)?_

Sherlock said, "Talk me through these murders."


	3. Chapter 3

Lestrade took a deep breath, like a schoolboy preparing to give a speech, and stepped forward to the board. "At the moment," he said, "They're disappearances, not murders. Though I suppose the body found today changes that." He grimaced. "But the first boy to disappear was Scott Pigeon, seventeen." He pointed to a blurry photograph of a boy with longish blond hair, wearing a blue and white rugby shirt. Two boys on either side of him had been cropped out of the photo, their disembodied arms wrapped around his. "Disappeared on the fourth of April 1982—nearly a year ago now. Second victim is Colin Bedsworth, fifteen, disappeared on the eighth of June, 1982. Third victim is Derek Metcalfe, sixteen, disappeared October of 1982. Then there's the fourth victim, Keith Embley, fifteen, disappeared fourth of January this year. And now Alan Clarke, sixteen, disappeared on the fifth of March, 1983. Four days ago."

"You've missed one," Sherlock said.

Lestrade looked puzzled. "No I haven't."

With a sigh, Sherlock stood up and pointed to the board himself. "April, June, October, January, March," he said. "All, generally speaking, at two-month intervals—except there are no victims between the beginning of June and the end of October. Psychosexual predators get the urge to kill on the basis of a biological clock, and they either kill at regular intervals or speed up. Which means either your killer missed his August/September victim because he was otherwise detained—hospitalised, out of the area, or incarcerated—or, more likely, there's another victim, a boy who went missing in August or possibly September of last year. But nobody knows he's missing—or they're trying to hide that he's missing. He's between fourteen and seventeen years of age, Caucasian, of a working class or lower middle-class background, quite likely into street drugs, possibly into prostitution, and on the balance of probabilities, has been officially missing since well before last October. Tell me about the ones you know about."

"Uh." Lestrade tried to pull himself together at the unexpected information and coughed into his hand to buy himself a little time. "Scott Pigeon lived out at Filwood Park with his mother… she's a single mum. I can't remember exactly when the dad nicked off, but it's been a while, and he's been ruled out as a suspect. On the night of the third of April, 1982, Scott spent the night at a mate's house—or so he told his mother. What him and the mate, Peter Noonan, actually did was hitch-hike out to Wookey Hole, which is a distance of twenty and odd miles. There's some limestone caves down that way that young people like to use to, you know, party out the way of their parents. There were twenty-two others there that night—the detectives have interviewed them all—none of them said anything memorable happened during the night, but if you ask me, I don't think they'd remember if they witnessed the Second Coming. Next day, Scott and Peter were trying to get home and not having any luck. They walked to Wells—it's two miles or so—but couldn't get anyone to let both of them in the car, so finally, Peter got a lift from a woman who was at the Esso service station in Chamberlain Street and left Scott there to try his luck. He says he didn't expect anything would happen—Scott was nearly eighteen, and it was broad daylight on a Sunday. But he never got home. His parents reported him missing shortly before midnight that night."

"Did the woman who gave Peter a lift actually see Scott?"

"Yes. She confirmed the two had hugged goodbye and Scott was alive and well at half-past eleven on Sunday morning. After that? Radio silence. Nobody saw him. Nobody heard from him."

"Wells is quite a distance from here. Why are the police in Bristol working this case?"

"Because of the next boy. Colin Bedsworth." Lestrade pointed to another photograph. A boy, much younger than Scott Pigeon, sitting on a floral sofa with a bald, chubby baby on his lap. His dark, shaggy hair hung in his eyes and his twig-like, bare legs seemed too fragile for even a baby to safely sit on. "Lived in Bishopsworth. On the eighth of June, 1982, which was a Tuesday, Colin left his house in Whitchurch Road for school as usual—Bedminster Down—but he meant to bunk off and never arrived there. We don't know where he was all morning, but a copper saw him at a fish and chip shop on St George's Road around midday and told him to get back to school. He didn't, and nobody's seen him since."

Sherlock got up and stood beside Lestrade, examining a map of Bristol he'd tacked in the centre of the boy's pictures. He'd marked each boy's initials in various places on it in his familiar print, neat but inelegant. "The parents say he's no angel, but he's otherwise a good kid and there's no way he'd run away," he said. "Didn't take anything except what he'd need for school that day. The poor kid's fourteen, Mr. Holmes."

"Mr. Holmes is my brother," Sherlock said tersely, ignoring Lestrade's helpless flail at the idea of having to address anyone as _Sherlock._ "Was Colin with anyone when the officer saw him?"

"He said he couldn't be sure, but as far as he could see, no. Not a soul. Which is pretty… well, look, if I was going to bunk off school, I'd at least do it with my mates. If I had to wander around all day on my own, dodging coppers and the mums of other kids I know, I may as well go to school, right?"

Sherlock shrugged. He'd never 'bunked off' school in his life. "So he probably _was_ with someone. Someone who didn't want to be seen."

"A kid?"

"No, an adult. The next boy."

"Derek Metcalfe." Lestrade tapped the photograph now adorning the front page of the evening newspapers. "First time anyone in town really heard about the boys going missing and decided they gave a…" He trailed off, clearing his throat. "His father's Richard Metcalfe."

Sherlock gave him a blank look.

"Oh, right, you're from London," Lestrade reminded himself. "Local news broadcaster, reads the six o'clock news, so everyone knows his face. On October 14, 1982, Derek Metcalfe and a mate were kicking a ball around the sports grounds here at Whitchurch." His sleeve brushed briefly against Sherlock's as he pointed to the place on the map. "At four o'clock, the mate's mum picked him up in the car, and he left Derek there to walk home. It's only four cross-streets. He never got there. Some witnesses living along his route home thought they might have heard a scuffle and a few shouts at around half past four, but they thought it was kids mucking about and weren't really paying attention. But get this: that mate of his who left him there? Jeff Noonan. Brother of Peter Noonan, the last person to see Scott Pigeon alive."

"I assume both Noonan brothers were extensively questioned?"

"The detectives have had them in three times, or so they tell me. Both had rock solid alibis—Jeff's mum confirmed that she picked him up and she had Peter and another son, nine-year-old Colin, in the car with her when she did. They all independently verified the time—the four o'clock sports update was on the car radio. Peter had a four-fifteen doctor's appointment, and the surgery confirmed that Sheila Noonan showed up for it on time, with all three boys, acting like nothing was wrong."

Sherlock mulled all this over in silence. "How do you feel about coincidences?"

"I think they're bollocks," Lestrade said. "This one is, anyway. The Noonan boys know Derek from primary school. It's not like they're all the one social group. And look how close they lived to one another—it's only a fifteen-minute drive from Bishopsworth to Whitchurch. But the Noonan boys have perfect alibis, so what am I to do with that? Anyway, it seems pretty clear to me that Derek, at least, was abducted by force. Nobody accepts a lift to drive only four streets unless they're incapacitated, and then there's the ruckus the witnesses heard. I'd put it down to a random snatch, but come on, the Noonans were _just there._ And Derek was a big, strong teenager. If you were going to take a risk and randomly snatch someone in public, you'd snatch a kid."

"This killer has no use for young children. Nobody's sent out any ransom notes?"

"Oh, yeah, the detectives have had loads of those. All followed up and found to be hoaxes."

"You seem to know an incredible amount about this case for a uniformed constable still on probation."

Lestrade gave a wry smile. "Friend on the force. Friend in the detective quad, anyway. I bet Neil doesn't tell me everything—just enough to keep me interested."

"Keith Embley," Sherlock said, all business. "Similar circumstances?"

"Fifteen years old. Good kid with four brothers and sisters, left a birthday party in Wharncliffe Gardens, Hengrove, at around two a.m. on the fourth of January. Four separate witnesses saw him walking along adjacent Fortfield Road on his way back home, the latest at about twenty past two. Then nothing. No news, no sightings."

"Connection with the Noonan brothers?"

"Went to school with them. According to everyone, teachers and all, the boys barely had a nodding acquaintance and certainly weren't friends, but come on. And that party he went to was about ten minutes' walk from the Noonans' house."

"Alibis for the night of the disappearance?"

"They weren't at the party. Both kids in bed asleep, if you believe them and their parents."

"Do you believe them?"

"I've never met any of them, so I've got no reason to doubt. But who'd know? What, do their parents watch them sleep?" Lestrade wandered over to a small cupboard on one side of the kitchenette and opened it. "You want a drink?"

"No," Sherlock said absently, "And neither do you."

A blink. "Don't I?"

"You opened a cupboard, not the fridge. Whiskey on a weeknight?"

Lestrade shut the cupboard, a little more aggressively than necessary, and went instead to a tiny bar fridge, pulling out two cans of cola. He handed one to Sherlock, who accepted it but did not open it. Lestrade opened his and took a long pull on it. "Anyway," he said finally, "the most recent victim is Alan Clarke."

"The boy you know."

Lestrade did a double take. "Sorry?"

"You tried to fortify yourself with alcohol before you told me about him. I do notice these things." Sherlock remembered, with a little bitterness, how John had accused him of not caring about the victims of crime. Well, perhaps that was true. It was also true that caring about them wouldn't help him save them. But recognising when _other people_ cared about them… perhaps that had its uses. "How do you know him?"

Lestrade dropped his shoulders. "He's from my part of the world," he said. "Worlebury, out west. And he was visiting here with his sister, okay?"

"His sister, who you happen to be taking out?"

"Yeah. Don't start on me. Julie's bloody hysterical."

"I can imagine. Where is she currently having hysterics?"

"The Bristol Grand Hotel. Her parents got here yesterday morning—"

"Unless the parents are also missing, I don't think they factor into the case. How did _Alan_ disappear?"

"The usual pattern. He and Julie arrived here by train on Sunday night. I went to pick them up. They were staying around the corner at a hotel called Doolan's."

"Obviously unsuitable for her more discerning parents. Alan wasn't required at school?"

"He doesn't go. Left at Christmas with no qualifications. Julie's training to be a legal secretary, but she got a fortnight off—"

"Julie is not missing, so her occupation is unlikely to be relevant."

Lestrade, put in check again, almost visibly bit his tongue, then took hold of his patience and started again. "Sunday night was fine, no problems," he said. "I was at work Monday, and Julie and Alan went sightseeing together. Tuesday was my day off, and me and Julie were…" He coughed into his hand. "Wanted to spend some time alone. So I gave Alan ten quid and he went into the city for the day—it's Julie's birthday next week, he said something about going to find something for a present. He left here, right here, around half-past one in the afternoon. We were supposed to meet at Barker's, this cafe thing in Corn Street, for dinner at six. He never showed up."

Sherlock opened his mouth to ask the usual questions: _Did he call anyone? Did he withdraw money anywhere? Have you checked CCTV?_ —but, remembering, nearly bellowed in frustrated rage. Some Bristol businesses were fitted with CCTV in 1983, perhaps; but the public streets almost certainly were not. Lestrade had given the boy cash, and he'd likely added that ten pounds to cash he was already carrying. Trying to work out where Alan Clarke had gone in the four hours and thirty minutes between when he'd last been seen and when he had been noticed missing was going to be harder than finding an honest man at Whitehall.

Speaking of Whitehall…

But no. Mycroft could be of no help. In 1983, the real 1983, he'd been sixteen years old and in his last year at a public school in Durham.

"Alan didn't know the other boys," Lestrade said. "How could he? He'd only just got here. He certainly didn't know the Noonans. Look, I might be new, but I'm not an idiot. I want to find the other boys, I start with the Noonans. But where do I even start trying to find Alan?"

"You start with me. I'll find him," Sherlock found himself saying. "And the others."

If he was expecting this offer to be greeted with rapture, he was disappointed. Lestrade looked at him blankly for a moment, then coughed and ran one hand through his hair. "Mr. Holmes—um. Sherlock," he said, "I don't mean to be rude about this, 'cause it's a generous offer you just made, but I don't even know you."

"No, but I know _you."_

Lestrade raised one eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"I know you're nineteen years old and come from a moderately prosperous working-class family," Sherlock said. "Your father is a recently-retired builder, dealing primarily in brickwork and carpentry, and he's nearly seventy years old—there's a significant age difference between he and your mother, and you were _her_ late baby, born ten and eight years respectively after two daughters. I know there's been significant conflict between both you and your father, who thinks you'd be better suited to blue-collar work than aspiring to be a detective, and you and your prospective father-in-law, who thinks you're not going to amount to much; certainly not enough to be the father of his grandchildren. I know you played football at school and you're a Liverpool supporter, an alliance inherited from a maternal uncle; that you play a bit of guitar but you're terrible at it; that you haven't read a novel since your A-levels, that you're an accomplished poker player, and that your left-hand, bottom wisdom tooth has come in sideways and has been giving you intermittent agony for the past six months, but you won't get it seen to because you're terrified of dentists and don't want anyone to know. Am I making an impression yet, Lestrade?"

For the next seven seconds, there was silence so profound that Sherlock could hear the click of heels from passersby in the street outside.

"You've been talking to Julie," Lestrade said.

"No. Think. _Why_ haven't I been talking to Julie?"

Lestrade, obligingly, thought. "Because," he said eventually, "She doesn't know about the dentist thing?"

"Oh, I rather think she does, though you've never told her. A man's insecurities are usually clear to the woman who loves him. Rather, she doesn't know your father thinks your goal in life should be to take over his trade and marry someone he would probably describe as a 'nice girl.'"

"Hey—"

"You do have some potential," Sherlock said, honestly under the impression that this was some kind of compliment. "But not enough to find Alan Clarke on your own. And you're not going to get any help from the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. Now, Probationary Constable Lestrade, do you want _my_ help or not?"

Lestrade turned back to the corkboard, looking over the material he'd collected there, eyes darting from one photograph to another. Finally he cleared his throat. "Okay," he said. "Okay. But listen, could you just tell me how you knew all that?"

"I didn't know it. I observed it." Though this was, Sherlock admitted to himself, only half the truth. He'd been matching several _facts_ , learned and then promptly deleted from his hard drive, with observations, some of which he might otherwise have had more trouble with. "And I'll tell you how I observed it tomorrow. I'll meet you here at nine o'clock."

"I've got work—"

"No, you're far too ill to go into work."

"Am I?"

"Unless your superior officers will be happy for us to interview Peter and Jeff Noonan with their blessings, you're going to have to be."

* * *

Sherlock walked home slowly, smoking a cigarette he'd pickpocketed from Lestrade—a real cigarette this time, pure tobacco—and thinking deeply. It was not a coincidence that he and John were here with Lestrade in what was, apparently, some version of 1983. And he was becoming increasingly sure it was not a coincidence either that Lestrade had a case. A case he had a very good chance of cracking open, with Sherlock Holmes in his court. The only problem was that Sherlock could not see anything particularly unique or interesting about the case. Standard sex murderer: the boys had been abducted by a pederast and were likely all dead. More annoyingly, he could not see any connection between Lestrade's case with what had happened only last night at an indoor pool in Whitechapel.

When he arrived back at the Dalrymple Street flat, he went into the bedroom to check on John and found him still in a deep sleep, though the duvet Sherlock had thrown over him had slid onto the floor. The room was freezing, almost as cold in as out; no central heating. Sherlock pulled the duvet over him again and went back out to the sitting room. It was the first time since arriving in Bristol that he paid the slightest bit of attention to his clothes; his coat still covered all, thank God, but his suit was blocky and uncomfortable, and he had nothing else to change into. Of course, he thought bitterly. He apparently did not exist now. Was he just supposed to wear the same thing indefinitely?

He'd deal with that tomorrow.

He took his coat off and lay down on the sofa, willing a few hours of sleep to come. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per my personal canon, and not contradicting anything we saw in Season 1, in this story there are ten years between Mycroft and Sherlock, and Euros doesn't exist. That Mycroft went to school in Durham is my only explanation as to how on earth he has a slight Northern accent when saying some words (e.g. 'one'), and Sherlock does not ;)
> 
> As always, your sitting down and reading this has been incredibly appreciated, and all kudos, bookmarks and reviews make my heart sing.


	4. Ten Quid

It was dawn when Sherlock woke, finding himself staring at the damp-stained ceiling and wondering, for far longer than he felt comfortable with, where he was. He sat up reluctantly, head spinning a moment, and looked around. John's bedroom door was now open. The bathroom door was closed, and from behind it, he could hear the shower running.

He got up, going over to the kitchenette and looking around for coffee. The only thing that seemed to come close to it was a cannister of decidedly dodgy-looking instant roast, but it would have to do. He filled the kettle from the tap, then set about searching around the cupboards for something resembling food. This search was not so successful. Apart from a variety of condiments, there was little more food in the house than half a loaf of bread, well on its way to becoming stale, and a few scraps of butter, still nestled in the waxed paper it had been bought in. Decidedly unappetising—he had his doubts as to whether even John, notoriously unpicky with what he ate, would try it. He had both cups of coffee prepared by the time John emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed and drying his hair with a towel.

 "Sherlock," he said in a conversational way, "I apparently just slept for fourteen hours. What the hell did you give me last night?"

Sherlock found himself hesitating, which didn't happen often. "Well," he said, glancing over at the bedroom doorway, "What you need to understand about that is—"

"Jesus," John muttered. "Come on. What?"

"Valium…"

_"Valium?_ Wh—"

"Your medical case was full of it. In the top shelf of your wardrobe."

John was staring at him in disbelief. "What the hell did you drug me for?"

Sherlock shrugged, as if it didn't matter. "Because I had to see Lestrade," he said, "and I had to see him alone."

John clenched his jaw, obviously struggling to keep hold of his temper. "What, and you couldn't just ask me to stay here and do a bit more digging while you did it?"

"No. I couldn't have you 'digging', as you so poetically put it, without me."

"Sherlock, you can't just switch me off when you're not around! A dose that knocked me out cold for _fourteen hours—"_

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Please," he said. "I think we've established that I have _some_ expert experience when it comes to calculating safe drug dosages."

"Yeah, see, that's the difference between a drug addict and a doctor. Both of them might think they know the correct way to knock someone out with a tranquilliser, but the doctor's not bloody stupid enough to do it. You could have killed me—"

"You seem alive and well enough to me."

"No thanks to you. This is why I can't even spend time in my own bloody flat—"

"And if it weren't for that," Sherlock said snippily, "You would probably have been sitting right in front of the windows at Baker Street when Moriarty's first bomb went off the other night—" He stopped.

After what felt like five minutes, and was probably five seconds, John ventured, "Sherlock? You okay?"

Sherlock swiped his hand over his mouth, thinking hard. _If he hadn't left the flat in a huff, where would John have been when Moriarty's bomb went off across the street the other night?_

"Sherlock?"

_Where would he have been if he'd left the flat twenty seconds earlier?_  

"Sherlock, come on, don't do this."

Sherlock shook himself out of it. After all, imagining a scenario where John had been at the front door of Baker Street when the flat twenty feet away had exploded was not useful, because it had never happened. "Um, yes, fine," he said.

"You've just had a thought. What was it?"

"I can't tell you yet."

"Sherlock—"

"Let me develop it."

John paused for a long time, but seeing Sherlock was inexorable, he finally gave in. "I have work this morning," he said tiredly, running one hand over his face. "Not that I can think straight after all that. This'll be interesting: spending all day pretending I know my colleagues and long-term patients."

"You're a war veteran. Blame any lapses of concentration on PTSD."

"I'd prefer not to, if I can avoid it. I'll end up in a loony bin somewhere—they still had them in 1983. What are you doing today?"

"Lestrade and I are going to interview Peter and Jeff Noonan, two boys connected with the case you saw yesterday. Five teenage boys have disappeared. The corpse you found yesterday afternoon is one of them, probably that of a boy named Derek Metcalfe. Pick up a newspaper before you get to work."

"I'll try," John muttered. "Listen, Sherlock. I'm serious. You don't just drug me when you want me out of the way. You either tell me to stay out of it, or better yet, you _let me in._ Is any of this getting through?"

"I need some money," Sherlock said. "I need clothes."

With a sigh, John went to his wallet and looked through it. "Not enough for both of us, I'm afraid," he said, "Since I'll need to get a cab to work. But here's an ATM token." He handed a small plastic card over to him. "You remember these?"

Sherlock didn't.

"They're like a debit card, but after you use it, the machine will probably keep it and post it back to me. What fun the early Eighties were, right? Good luck actually finding a cashpoint. I don't know how many there are around here."

"One, at least," Sherlock said, examining the token like it was a fascinating piece of evidence.

"I'll have to get some more cash at the bank on my lunch break or something," John said. "Assuming I actually remember how to fill out a withdrawal slip."

* * *

After John left for work, Sherlock took a shower and arranged his clothes as best he could. Taking the ATM card, the flat keys and some more of John's cigarettes, he made his way back to the Broad Street flat on foot. Lestrade met him at the door, dressed in that impeccable uniform.

"Sorry," he said, by way of an opener. "I start work at one, and I really need to actually go. I can't get by without a paycheque."

By this time, Sherlock had noticed that Greg Lestrade was not the only person in his flat. A girl in her late teens was sitting on the bed, wearing high-waisted blue jeans and an oversized orange shirt that slipped off her shoulders. Her hair was blonde and fluffy, her eyes blue, her mouth hanging open slightly, which gave her the disarming look of a helpless ingenue. Even Sherlock now understood, in his disinterested way, why Greg Lestrade had married Julie Clarke. It had not been one of his wisest decisions. After two decades married to a man who was rarely physically home and even more rarely mentally home, she had embarked on a series of affairs and had, to date, kicked her husband out three times in the last twelve months. Lestrade was forever trying to 'patch things up', and Sherlock had honestly wondered, on more than one occasion, why on earth he bothered.

"Oh, sorry," Lestrade said. "Julie, this is Sherlock." Again, that wince at the name. "Sherlock, Julie."

Julie got up and shook Sherlock's hand, then gave a violent sob.

"We'll find him," Lestrade said, giving her shoulder a warm pat. "Maybe go back and see what the real police are up to this morning, right? Neil will give you a hand."

"Who's Neil?" Sherlock asked, in much less emotional tones.

"Neil Findlay," Lestrade explained over his shoulder. "A mate of mine. One of the detectives working the…" He stopped himself before he could blurt out _working the murder case._

* * *

Sherlock was least comfortable with female persons while they were crying, and was more than relieved when Lestrade finally put Julie in a cab back to her parents' and watched it off to the street corner. Only then did he attempt to bring up the subject of the Noonan's. "I assume they know we're on our way," he said.

"Call them this morning." Lestrade was looking uncomfortable. "I might've told them a few lies about my status on the case, though. God help me if we get caught."

Lestrade was really in a difficult position, Sherlock thought. Without his uniform, he was a nobody, and who would tell information to a nobody? In his uniform, as now, he represented the local police, something he had no authority to do on this case. He suddenly wished he'd brought John with him—John knew how having an official profession worked and he knew how to navigate difficult social interactions.

They left the flat in Lestrade's car and arrived at the Noonan house half an hour later, a detached house with a leafless willow in the front yard and a stained-glass panelled door. At Lestrade's knock, a frowsy, fortyish woman opened the door.

"Hello," she said, and her voice was warm and friendly. A large wet patch on her knitted peach shirt gave away that she'd just come from a full kitchen sink.

"Constable Lestrade," Greg said, taking his helmet off politely. "We spoke on the phone this morning?"

"Oh, yes," she said. She gave her frizzy, greying hair an ineffectual swipe, then glanced down in despair as she noticed the suds on her clothes. "Come in. Who's your…?"

"Colleague," Lestrade said, without skipping a beat, as they entered a front foyer cluttered with the detritus of teenage boys: bicycles, hockey stick, muddied trainers in a pile by the welcome mat. "Sherlock Holmes. He's a consulting detective for the Metropolitan Police. More of a freelancer in this case."

Sheila Noonan took this philosophically. "Okay," she said, indicating an archway off the foyer. "Peter's just through here."

"And Jeff?"

"Outside, kicking a ball around. Do you want me to bring him in?"

Lestrade appeared to be considering it before he said, "Not yet. Maybe it's best if we talk to each on their own for now."

She led them through to the sitting room, where a young man was perched on the piano stool, though the upright piano it belonged to was closed and silent. Knowing in advance that Peter Noonan was seventeen, Sherlock had expected gangly awkwardness, but the boy could easily have passed for Lestrade's age. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with oddly soft, golden-brown hair that nearly reached his shoulders, and which had been cut into something bordering on a mullet at the front. Sherlock glanced down at the boy's hands. Slender and white. He was not used to manual labour… but then, of course, it was also the end of winter. The Noonans took their holidays right there in Bristol.

"Peter, hi," Lestrade said, shaking his hand. "I'm Greg Lestrade, from the CID. This is my colleague, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock, after a second's hesitation, shook Peter's hand also. Not out of politeness: you could tell a lot about a suspect, or a witness, or anybody, really, from their handshake. How firm? Hands warm or cold, clammy or dry? Judging from Peter Noonan's handshake, there was nothing on his conscience, but that didn't mean much. There was nothing much on the conscience of a psychopath at the best of times.

_It should take one to know one,_ Sherlock thought bitterly, remembering again John's accusations over Moriarty's hostages. As much as he did not want to admit it, his thoughts kept returning to it. Perhaps it was important.

"Hi," Peter said, in a voice that was well past being broken. He was, however, soft-spoken, given his appearance. "Can Mum stay?"

"Yep." Lestrade started to look around for somewhere to sit, and Mrs Noonan directed him into an armchair. Peter sat in the opposite one, and Sherlock, not quite sure what to do, remained standing in the doorway, hands behind his back.

"Peter," Lestrade said, "Have you seen the papers today?"

After a pause, Peter nodded silently.

"Okay." Lestrade echoed his nod. "Not good news, I think we can say that. You're not in trouble, but we think maybe the same person who took Derek Metcalfe also took Scott Pigeon and the others. And we really think you and Jeff can help us find them."

"I already told the police," Peter said, a whine creeping into his voice. He made eye contact with his mother, who started, as if she was about to get up and call the interview to an end. "I told the police everything I knew..."

"Everything?" Lestrade was smiling, a slight tease in his voice. "Mate, if you can remember every single thing about the night you went out with Scott, they need your help at MI6, with a memory like that."

Peter looked at him, sulky. "What do you want to know?"

"Here, I'll make a bet with you." Lestrade pulled out his wallet, plucked a ten-pound note from it, and put it back in his pocket. "Here's ten quid. I'm going to ask you a question, and if you give me a truthful answer, I'll give it to you. If I ask you another one and you don't want to answer, if it makes you feel uncomfortable, no problem—just give it back to me and I'll try another question that might be easier to answer. Whoever's got the money by the end gets to keep it. Deal?"

Peter seemed to be giving this some thought. Finally, he nodded.

"What's your middle name, Peter?"

"Mark."

Lestrade cheerfully handed the money over. "And your favourite colour?"

"Red."

"What's your favourite football team?"

"Chelsea."

"Peter, do you know where Scott Pigeon is?"

A long pause. Then, finally, Peter handed the note back to Lestrade.


End file.
